The Little Mermaid Cake

(8) The seaweed is always greener, in somebody else’s lake

You dream about going up there, well that’s just a big mistake 

Just look at the world around you, right here on the ocean floor

Such wonderful things around you, what more are you looking for?

Under the sea, under the sea

Darlin it’s better, down where it’s wetter

Take it from meeeee

 

Up on the shore they work all day, out in the sun they slave away

While we devotin’, full time to floatin’,

Under the sea (8)

A friend asked me to bake a cake for his little sister’s birthday. The original plan was to bake a little mermaid and nemo, under the sea and musical themed cake, but at the very last minute, I decided to cut nemo out of the picture (sorry to all you nemo fans out there). I was just wayyyy too tired to make fondant and create a nemo out of it. 

Early in the day when I first started making the cake, things weren’t going well at all. I started to panic about how I could decorate the cake. Oh and I probably spent about 3 hours comtemplating whether or not I should go with fondant. In the end I went with buttercream simply because I’m more comfortable working with it. 

Once I started decorating though, my worry went away because the cake actually started to look good! When my parents walked in the kitchen, they BEAMED at the cake. I was so happy because I think that for once, they were proud of my work. That was also the first time that they didn’t complain about “all space I was taking up in the kitchen!” and how “no one is gonna eat your cake, it looks too sugary!”. I beamed back at them, with ten shades of frosting on my hair, shirt and arms, flour on face, and food colouring on my teeth. Boy, what a pretty sight I must’ve been. 

When it was time to deliver the cake, I was sad to hand it over. Part of me just wanted to come up with some lie so that I could keep the cake and stare at it forever. But a child’s happiness was at stake, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do that. It was all worth it though! Later on that night, my friend texted me and told me how much his sister loved the cake!! The cake was such a hit that his second sister got jealous! I guess I’ll be making another cake for them soon 😉

2 tiered The Little Mermaid Cake

Vanilla Cake, batter separated into 3 equal portions, baked in 10inch pan

Chocolate Cake, batter separated into 2 equal portions, baked in 8inch pan

2x the recipe for Whipped Vanilla Buttercream, untinted, tinted sky blue (Wilton), leaf green (AmeriColour), violet (AmeriColour), red-red (wilton). Then fill pastry bag with green icing, fitted with Wilton leaf tip #352. Red icing goes into a parchment cone. 

Melted white chocolate wafers/candy melts, untinted and tinted yellow, pour both into separate parchment cones. 

Royal Icing, (I forgot the adjustments that I made to create a stiff royal icing, sorry!) tinted black and filled into pastry bag fitted with Wilton round tip #3

Little Mermaid Figurine, bought off a cake decorating compnay on ebay

How To

1. After vanilla cake layers have cooled, fill and cover with untinted vanilla buttercream, which is also called “crumb coating”. 

2. Cover the crumb coated vanilla cake with sky blue vanilla icing, try to get the icing as smooth as possible! I use a spatula for this, but a flat edged cake comb would work as well. I found that putting the cake on a lazy susan helped to smoothly apply icing too.

3. After chocolate cake layers have cooled, stack them on top of each other. Cut pieces of cake off the sides and top until you achieve a dome shape.

4. Fill and cover the chocolate cake layers with untinted vanilla icing. Place chocolate cake on top of vanilla cake.

5. Frost the chocolate cake with violet buttercream. Using your spatula, apply buttercream in vertical strokes. 

6. Pipe seaweed using green buttercream all over the chocolate cake and edges of the vanilla cake.

7. Pipe flowers using red-red buttercream all over the chocolate cake.

8. Pipe white and yellow dots using melted chocolate wafers to add more colour and detail to the cake.

9. Carefully pipe royal icing on the vanilla cake in 5 horizontal lines. Then pipe music notes on. You can using a marker to ensure that you get even spacing and straight lines, but I just free-handed it.

10. Cut a small hole at the top of the chocolate cake using a knife, insert little mermaid figurine.